MoneyCentral & CNBC.com Plan Merger

Microsoft Corp. and General Electric Co.’s NBC division announced plans to merge MSN MoneyCentral and CNBC.com into a single personal-finance and news site.

Under the multiyear agreement, the new site will be dubbed CNBC MoneyCentral and combine the personal-finance offerings from MSN with content from the CNBC television network.

The two companies have been partners in the MSNBC Internet and television venture since 1995.

“We’ve had a great relationship with the NBC family for many years now, and the opportunity to bring together the best of what we each can bring to the Web in the finance category is clearly a win-win situation,” said Rick Belluzzo, president and chief operating officer of Microsoft, in a prepared statement.

The new site is expected to launch this summer. As with MSNBC.com, the site will operate from Microsoft’s offices, with the editorial team split between Fort Lee, N.J., and Redmond, Wash. Microsoft (MSFT) will oversee general operational management for the site under the direction of Erik Jorgensen, general manager of the consumer financial-products group at Microsoft. A joint editorial board will provide strategic editorial direction for the site, the companies said.

The Wall Street Journal Online has a content-sharing arrangement with MSNBC.com. Also, Dow Jones&Co. (DJ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com, is co-owner with General Electric (GE) of the CNBC television operations in Asia and Europe; Dow Jones also provides news content to CNBC.